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An Exhortation from the Second and Third Houses of the Earth Listen, you people of the Adobes, you people of the Obsidian! Listen, you gardeners and farmers, orcharders and vintners, shepards and drovers! Your arts are admirable and generous, arts of plenty and increase, and they are dangerous. Among the tasselled corn the man says, this is my plowing and sowing, this is my land. Among the grazing sheep the woman says, these are my breeding and caring, these are my sheep. In the furrow the seed sprouts hunger, In the fenced pasture the cow calves fear, the granary is heaped full with poverty, the foal of the bridled mare is anger, the fruit of the olive is war. Take care, you Adobe people, you Obsidian people, and come over onto the wild side. Don't stay all the time on the farming side, it's dangerous to live there. Come among the unsown grasses bearing richly, the the oaks heavey with acorns, the sweet roots in unplowed earth. Come among the deer on the hill, the fish in the river, the quail in the meadows. You can take them, you can eat them, like you they are food. They are with you, not for you. Who are their owners? This is the puma's range, this hill is the vixen's, this is the owl's tree, this is the mouse's run, this is the minnow's pool: it is all one place. No fences here, but sanctions. No war here, but dying. There is dying here. Come hunt, it is yourself you hunt. Come gather yourself from the grass, the branch, the earth. Walk here, sleep well, on the ground that is not yours, but is yourself. -Ursula K. Le Guin From Always Coming Home (Harper and Row, 1985) | |||||